CM allocates portfolios to Harak Singh Rawat
Dehradun, June 12
Uttarakhand Chief Minister Vijay Bahuguna allocated portfolios to Harak Singh Rawat, the newly inducted minister in his ministry, and also administered the oath of office as Parliamentary secretaries to three legislators here today.

Chief Minister Vijay Bahuguna along with legislators at a press conference in Dehradun on Tuesday.
Tribune photo: Vinod Pundir

Development works in all 60 wards get stalled
Dehradun, June 12
The declaration of elections for two vacant wards, wards number 37 and 38, of Dehradun Municipal Corporation, on June 29, has stalled all the development works to be undertaken in all the 60 wards of the city.

Hydropower projects on Ganga unaccepatable, says saint
Haridwar, June 12
Revered guru Shankaracharya Shri Kanchi Kamkoti Peetham Shri Jayendra Saraswati Maharaj has termed hydropower projects on the Ganga and its tributaries as unacceptable. Kanchi Shankaracharaya said such projects on the Ganga were affecting the sanctity and purity of the river.

Major robbery case solved; 4 arrested
Haridwar, June 12
In a major success for the police, four persons involved in a major broad-daylight heist were arrested today by a special operations group team.
These arrested were contractor Ram Chandra, resident of Alwar, Rajasthan, Zafar, resident
Roshanabad, Shaukin, resident of Muzzafarnagar, Intezaar, resident of
Muzzafarnagar, and Ajay Singh Yadav, resident of Rehmat Nagar,Lucknow.

Mussoorie swimmers excel in state level c’ship
Mussoorie, June 12
Swimmers from Mussoorie excelled in the boys section in the Third Uttarakhand State Swimming Championship that concluded in Haldwani recently.
Kartikeya Pratap Singh from St. George’s College, Mussoorie, brought laurels to the school and the town by winning one gold medal in the 50-metre butterfly and two bronze medals in the 50-metre freestyle and 100-metre breaststroke in the senior division.

A winner of the state-level swimming championship receives a citation and an award in Haldwani on Tuesday

Abhimanyu academy win
Dehradun, June 12
The Abhimanyu Cricket Academy defeated the Sports Trainees team by 106 runs during the inaugural match of the Under-13 Triangular Series Cricket Tournament here today.

Dehradun, June 12
The long and unpredictable power cuts have made life miserable for the people of Dehradun city.
All the huge claims of uninterrupted and continuous power supply of the state Congress have proved wrong. The Opposition has begun cashing in on the issue by protesting in front of the office of the Uttarakhand Power Corporation Limited almost everyday.

The real culprit behind this sudden precarious power situation is said to be drastic low output in the power generation. Uttarakhand Jal Vidyut Nigam (UJVNL), which generated 20 MU to 18 MU every day between June 1 and 6, is receiving plummeted generation from June 7 onwards, which came to as low as 12 MU on June 11. This tapering graph of generation shows the poor state of the entire power scenario in
Uttarakhand.

UPCL did no banking with any other state out of it's confidence that the power generation which had started doing well in the early week of June will continue to do so till the monsoon got over. According to sources, the reason considered for low power generation is the climate change in higher reaches, as the cloudy weather has slowed down the pace of snow melting.

The demand for power has undoubtedly shot up with the heat at it's worst and rain dodging the state. Clouds did appear but for a short while during the last few days. The usage of electrical gadgets for relief from heat has taken up the power demand from 32 to 34 MU. By including the state's share from Central sector generating stations, which too has fallen slightly from 12 MU to 10.9 MU, the gross availability comes around 24 MU along with 0.8 MU from Vishnu Prayag project. Extra power is being drawn, and it ranges between between 3 to 2 MU these days. Energy to the tune of 1.1 MU is being

received from power purchase agreement with outside agencies as well.

In a nutshell, emergency purchase of power due to low frequency is being done for 3 to 5 hours in the city. Beyond the official data, the residents in the city have been suffering longer cuts and that too at different intervals in the day as well night time.

Officials blame tripping of power lines and faults in the transformers or substations for the stretched out shutdown.

The official data also confirms shutdown for 8 hours in rural areas of Haridwar, Udham Singh Nagar, steel furnaces; 9 hours in industries in Garhwal and Kumaon, which have not paid extra charges for continuous supply; 4 hours in small towns; and 3 hours in hills though Mussoorie, Kotdwar and Nainital have been kept out of power cuts.

According to sources, the officials are waiting for the monsoons to arrive within a week, which they feel will solve all their problems as the power generation will increase and demand will also decrease side by side with the rains over
the state.

Dehradun, June 12
Uttarakhand Chief Minister Vijay Bahuguna allocated portfolios to Harak Singh Rawat, the newly inducted minister in his ministry, and also administered the oath of office as Parliamentary secretaries to three legislators here today.

Addressing a press conference, Bahuguna announced that Harak Singh Rawat has been given the charge of Agriculture, Agriculture marketing, Agriculture Education, Medical Education and Ex-servicemen Welfare.

Rawat was inducted as a minister in the state Congress government on June 9.

Mantri Prasad Naithani was looking after the Agriculture and Agriculture Marketing while Surender Singh Negi was looking after the Ex-servicemen Welfare Department. The department of medical education was with the Chief Minister
himself.

Bahuguna also administered the oath of office
to three Congress legislators, namely Vijay Pal Singh Sajwan, Ganesh Godiyal and Narayan
Ram Arya as Parliamentary Secretaries. Sajwan comes from Uttarkashi district while Godiyal is from Pauri Garhwal and Narayan Ram Arya from Pithoragarh.

These parliamentary
secretaries will enjoy the rank of cabinet ministers.

The Chief Minister also announced to appoint party legislator Kunwar Parnav Singh Champion as the Chairman of the Uttarakhand Forest Corporation and Sarvat Karim Ansari, Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) legislator from Mangalore in Haridwar district, as the chairman of the Uttarakhand Housing Board. Dinesh Dhanai, independent legislator representing Tehri Assembly segment, had been appointed the Chairman of the Garhwal Mandal Vikas Nigam.

Dehradun, June 12
The declaration of elections for two vacant wards, wards number 37 and 38, of Dehradun Municipal Corporation, on June 29, has stalled all the development works to be undertaken in all the 60 wards of the city.

The code of conduct has been enforced in the wake of the election due to which the board meeting of DMC, too, was not held today as was proposed earlier. Many important decisions were to be taken, especially the one related to house tax, where slum colonies were to be included and the norms of house tax were to be finalised.

The monsoon is just around the corner but the works, which were to be wrapped up before the rainy season, have been put in abeyance. The tender process for the development projects has been held up. The tenders had been postponed for the last four months as the contractors refused to participate in the bidding process until their pending payment was made. They had been paid half of the amount of total Rs 2.50 crore, and Mukhya Nagar Adhikari Ashok Kumar has assured the rest as well.

Now when the contractors were placated, the elections to these two wards, where ward 37 of Mata Mandir Road got vacant due to the sudden death of councillor Uday Chandel, and ward 38 of Race Course fell vacant when
its councillor Ganesh Dangwal left it to join government service, have
been announced all of a sudden.

Councillor Sachin Patel said many roads in his ward, Yamuna Colony, required urgent repair which, if not done before monsoons, would pose serious problems for the commuters.

He said his file in
this regard had been gathering dust in the DMC as the tenders were not carried out in time, and now the work further got postponed due to enforcement of code of conduct, which, anyways was going to be operational till the first week of July when the rainy season would have started.

He said if the DMC officials urged State Election Commission to permit the development tasks in regard of impending monsoons in all the wards except those two where elections are to be held, then a solution could be in sight.

Haridwar, June 12
Revered guru Shankaracharya Shri Kanchi Kamkoti Peetham Shri Jayendra Saraswati Maharaj has termed hydropower projects on the Ganga and its tributaries as unacceptable. Kanchi Shankaracharaya said such projects on the Ganga were affecting the sanctity and purity of the river.

Speaking at Madras Dharamshala, Birla ghat, the saint extended his support to the June 18 pro-Ganga movement at Jantar Mantar being staged by Shankaracharya of Dwarka-Jyotish Peeth Swaroopanand Saraswati Maharaj.

He said due to prior commitments, he would not be able to attend the agitation, but he had full support to this movement. —
TNS

Mussoorie, June 12
Swimmers from Mussoorie excelled in the boys section in the Third Uttarakhand State Swimming Championship that concluded in Haldwani recently.
Kartikeya Pratap Singh from St. George’s College, Mussoorie, brought laurels to the school and the town by winning one gold medal in the 50-metre butterfly and two bronze medals in the 50-metre freestyle and 100-metre breaststroke in the senior division.

Bhanu Pratap Singh of Wynberg-Allen School, Mussoorie, won a bronze in the 50-metre backstroke event in the sub-junior division.

Rajeev Mehta, president of the Uttarakhand Olympics Association, was the chief guest on the occasion. Deepa Mehta, president of the Uttarakhand Swimming Association, awarded medals and citations to the winners in the different categories.

Twenty-six new records were set during the course of the championship in Haldwani. According to the organizers, the selection of the state team for participation in the forthcoming junior and sub-junior national championships would be made on the basis of their performance in this meet.

The exhibition included photographs of various forms of nature like wild life, flowers and landscape.

Bhawana, who has been working as a photographer with Government Women’s Polytechnic College, Bhopal, since 2001 has been passionately pursuing photography for the past 27 years. “I had been photographing for several years and I thought I should take my creations to people. So I decided to organise 12 exhibitions in a year at different places and on different subjects,” she said.

This was her sixth exhibition. Earlier, all her five exhibitions had received positive response from the people, friends and critiques. Bhawana has also been actively involved in short film making.

She, who likes clicking everything she finds worth clicking, also gave tips on photography to young photo enthusiast who had come to visit exhibition.

Also present on the occasion were photographers Neeraj Richhariya and Bhumesh Bharati.

Dehradun, June 12
A team of People For Animals, Uttarakhand, raided an illegal cattle market at Landhora in the Laksar area of Haridwar
district.

According to Gauri Maulekhi member-secretary, PFA, Uttarakhand, during the raid it was discovered that the contractor of the cattle market had obtained the contract
from the zila panchayat and had been blatantly selling the cattle to butchers with no regard to the Uttarakhand Cow and it's Progeny Protection Act 2007.

She disclosed that a case under Section 6 of the Uttarakhand Cow and it's Progeny Protection Act 2007 has been registered at the Landhora reporting chowki.

She said the contractor and his munshi are absconding.

She held that every
week over 1,000 bulls get smuggled across the border through Landhora cattle market, which is
at a distance of 10 km from the Uttarakhand-Uttar Pradesh border.

"No veterinary examination is done and no permission of the district authorities is sought before such a sale.

The bulls are stuffed into loading trucks and sent to slaughter houses situated in Bijnore and Saharanpur, Uttar Pradesh," she pointed out.